Christopher Hitchens, the British- born journalist at home in the middle of U.S. political disputes including Bill Clinton’s infidelity, the war in Iraq and the role of organized religion, has died, Vanity Fair magazine said. He was 62.
Hitchens died at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, Vanity Fair reported on its Web site.
In June 2010, while publicizing a memoir, “Hitch-22,” he was diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus. He chronicled his illness in Vanity Fair while copping to the role that his tobacco habit likely played. As he wrote in 2007: “My keystone addiction is to cigarettes, without which cocktails and caffeine (and food) are meaningless.” Vanity Fair won a 2011 National Magazine Award for Hitchens’s columns about his illness.
A man of ample, strong convictions, Hitchens defied political labeling. He supported the U.S. war in Iraq before and after American public opinion turned against it. He was a critic of former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who, he said, deserved to be prosecuted for mass killings of civilians, including in Indochina during the Vietnam War. He called Mother Teresa “a fanatic, a fundamentalist and a fraud.”
He backed the impeachment of President Clinton for his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, as detailed in Hitchens’s book, “No One Left to Lie To: The Values of the Worst Family” (1999). He lamented George W. Bush’s “shortcomings of intellect” yet endorsed his re-election in 2004. His 2007 takedown of religion, “God Is Not Great,” was nominated for a National Book Award and spurred widespread debate.
Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair, where Mr Hitchens was a contributing editor, paid tribute on the magazine's website.
"Christopher Hitchens was a wit, a charmer and a troublemaker, and to those who knew him well, he was a gift from, dare I say, God," he wrote.
He died today at the MD Anderson Cancer Centre, in Houston, after a punishing battle with oesophageal cancer, the same disease that killed his father.
He said Mr Hitchens would be remembered for his "elevated but inclusive humour" and a "staggering, almost punishing memory that held up under the most liquid of late-night conditions".
He wrote: "And to all of us, his readers, Christopher Hitchens will be remembered for the millions of words he left behind. They are his legacy. And, God love him, it was his will."
The English-American citizen, who is survived by his wife and three children, was born in Portsmouth - the son of a naval officer - and educated at private school and Oxford University.
A columnist and literary critic, he often appeared on talk shows and gave lectures.
The publication of his 2007 book God Is Not Great made him a major celebrity in his adopted homeland of the United States - he became a US citizen in 2007.
An outspoken atheist, he took on former prime minister Tony Blair in a televised debate last year in Toronto, Canada, linking God to a "celestial dictatorship, a kind of divine North Korea".
His memoir Hitch-22 was published last year, the same year he was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer.
In an interview last November, he told the BBC the cancer had spread to his lymph nodes and was possibly brought on by his "bohemian and rackety life".
Writing on Twitter, the Booker prize-winning author Salman Rushdie paid tribute to Mr Hitchens.
Goodbye, my beloved friend," he wrote.
Great voice falls silent.
Great heart stops.
Christopher Hitchens, April 13, 1949-December 15, 2011."
Michael Shermer, the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, wrote: "We shall miss you, your voice, your pen, & most of all your mind Christopher.
"The world is better because of you."
American pastor Rick Warren, who delivered the invocation at President Barack Obama's inauguration, wrote: "My friend Christopher Hitchens has died.
"I loved & prayed for him constantly & grieve his loss. He knows the Truth now.
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